Contenu du sommaire : La cause des femmes

The Changing Balance of Power between the Sexes. A Process-Sociological Study: The Example of the Ancient Roman State Norbert Elias When studying the rules of behavior between men and women in Europe, N. Elias refuse the idea of a linear process which made them move. He studies the Ancien Roman State and underlines that the change proceeded by a suit of irregular and sometimes contradictory outbreaks. The Roman Republic characterized by a social weakness of women, due to their physical weakness, which prevented them from fighting in this time of omnipresent wars. But after having been only men's property, women became equal with men in front of marriage, in the second century BC, and they could choose to get divorced and could possess goods in their own right - this evolution was due to a general enrichment, to the emergence of a state organization which was capable of protecting women against the men's omnipotence, and to the rise in civilization.

Between Principles and Pragmatism: Deputies and Senators in the First Debates Over Women's Suffrage in France (1919-1922) Anne Verjus The failure of the project to grant women the vote in the Senate in 1922 should not obscure the success it initially encountered in the Chamber of Deputies in 1919. Nevertheless, despite the different results, the same «sexualist» rhetoric was at work in both houses: a vision of women as a class whose political behavior would be distinct from men's. Both institutional and contextual reasons explain why the two legislative bodies, both with similar political compositions, reached opposite decisions only three years apart. Examining this debate on women's suffrage nuances the history of peculiarly French resistance to feminism. It also shows how the same rhetoric could lead to completely contradictory responses, depending on the Chamber in which it was used, and thus the different degrees of responsibility of the legislators involved.

The Institutionalization of the Women Issue: Paradox and Discrepancies Claudie Baudino Since the mid seventies, the women issue has got institutionalised : specialized governmental structures have been framed to implement policies aiming at improving women's rights and status. Yet, a great deal of women activists were not satisfied with those initiatives. This article emphasizes the denunciation by the feminists of a discrepancy between the institutional answer, inspired by the republican universalism, and the activists claims, thought in terms of specificity. Whereas the feminist movement and the movement for parity have incited the governmental structures to acknowledge the difference between sexes, this article underlines the paradox of the institutionalization of the women issue which is continuing in an universalist and egalitarian way, that is to say unconcerned with differences.

A Strange Defeat: the Constitutional Law About Parity Rose-Marie Lagrave Retracing the origin and the progressive ways of construction of the parity movement, we reveal the procedures allowing a pressure group to obtain political consensus and, henceforth, to make adopted a bill. The media and political success of the battle for parity is due, to a certain extent, to the mathematical simplicity of the rule: one man, one woman. «In the name of the universal mix of humanity (the human species)», the parity argumentation is opposed to the equalitarian doctrine, which is rather focused on according an equal status to pariahs, in order to rebuild a representative democracy. The parity thought, despite its philosophical ingredient, is related to an ethnical thinking to the extent that it establishes a particularism based on the essentialized participation to a gender. Finally, the universality performed by the parity movement mistakes its target: the object of this critic should have been the ways men have appropriated and used the universality principle - not the universality itself - which implies to imagine polity and man domination as crossing lines.

The Women's Cause. An Irrelevant Issue in the Islamic Democracy of Iran Fariba Adelkhah Since the end of the 80's, the condition of Iranian women became significantly better. Many of them participate in the public sphere and got an economical or social activity. Rafsandjani's politicy of liberalization furthered this womens's investment, which became more explicitly political. However, women remain out of a number of social areas and are still victims of social and legal discriminations. Indeed, only seem possible the progress respecting the traditionnal Islamic think about women's condition in life, and serving the «honour of the system», rather than attacking it. In this context, the veil paradoxically makes easier the investment of women in the public sphere.

Reading the Romance. Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature Janice A. Radway The romance-reading phenomenon, considered non only from the internal narrative structure, but also, through an ethnographic investigation, from the practices and interpretations of their readers, appears to be a fundamentally ambivalent practice. It reinforces traditional values and institutions and carries oppositional aspects (can be said an «oppositional moment»), at the same time. The stereotyped narratives and characters, the social world divided into male public sphere and female private sphere, the inavoidable happy ending through marriage combine to bring about a conservative vision of social roles. However, the reading of romance, which arises out of dissatisfaction regarding the relationships between men and women, is interpreted by the readers themselves as a compensatory and a combative act, claiming to their own space and time, as the learning of assertiveness and thus can be seen as a minimal but nonetheless legitimate form of protest.

The Gender of Journalism. The Ambiguous Impact of the Feminisation in the French Press Erik Neveu Using a sample of press cuttings and interviews with female (and male) French journalists, this paper explores the impact of the growing weight of women in journalism. The study shows that gender has a significant impact both on the ascription of journalists to specific newsbeats, and on the kind of paper produced inside the same newsbeat. It explores in a second development the hypothesis of a 'feminine' style of journalistic writing. The growing importance of women among journalists suggests finally new questions on the uses of their gendered skills. Do female journalists succeed in using their specific abilities to produce a renewal of the press coverage of events? Or are they simply «highjacked» by commercial strategies searching a growing audience?